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Quotes by Alexander Pope


How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
– Alexander Pope
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.
– Alexander Pope
A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.
– Alexander Pope
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
– Alexander Pope
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
– Alexander Pope
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
– Alexander Pope
A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
– Alexander Pope
All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
– Alexander Pope
All nature is but art unknown to thee.
– Alexander Pope
And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
– Alexander Pope
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.
– Alexander Pope
Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn, Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn.
– Alexander Pope
Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
– Alexander Pope
Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
– Alexander Pope
But blind to former as to future fate, What mortal knows his pre-existent state?
– Alexander Pope
But honest instinct comes a volunteer; Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit, While still too wide or short in human wit.
– Alexander Pope
Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.
– Alexander Pope
Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.
– Alexander Pope
Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.
– Alexander Pope
For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
– Alexander Pope
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
– Alexander Pope
Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
– Alexander Pope
Gentle dullness ever loves a joke.
– Alexander Pope
Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.
– Alexander Pope
Good God! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.
– Alexander Pope
Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.
– Alexander Pope
Health consists with temperance alone.
– Alexander Pope
Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
– Alexander Pope
Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.
– Alexander Pope
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.
– Alexander Pope
I am his Highness dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
– Alexander Pope
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
– Alexander Pope
If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!
– Alexander Pope
It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles: the less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out.
– Alexander Pope
Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.
– Alexander Pope
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; you played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill: walk sober off; before a sprightlier age comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage: leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
– Alexander Pope
Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.
– Alexander Pope
Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.
– Alexander Pope
Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
– Alexander Pope
Men dream of courtship, but in wedlock wake.
– Alexander Pope
Never find fault with the absent.
– Alexander Pope
Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.
– Alexander Pope
Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.
– Alexander Pope
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
– Alexander Pope
On wrongs swift vengeance waits.
– Alexander Pope
One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.
– Alexander Pope
Order is heaven's first law.
– Alexander Pope
Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.
– Alexander Pope
Passions are the gales of life.
– Alexander Pope
Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.
– Alexander Pope
Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.
– Alexander Pope
Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.
– Alexander Pope
Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.
– Alexander Pope
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
– Alexander Pope
Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.
– Alexander Pope
Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
– Alexander Pope
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
– Alexander Pope
Teach me to feel another's woe,To hide the fault I see,That mercy I to others show,That mercy show to me.
– Alexander Pope
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of the Great Breath, which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute - Abstract Space and Duration being the other two.
– Alexander Pope
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.
– Alexander Pope
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
– Alexander Pope
The most positive men are the most credulous.
– Alexander Pope
The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.
– Alexander Pope
The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.
– Alexander Pope
The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.
– Alexander Pope
The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.
– Alexander Pope
There goes a saying, and 'twas shrewdly said, Old fish at table, but young flesh in bed.
– Alexander Pope
'Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
– Alexander Pope
To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
– Alexander Pope
To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.
– Alexander Pope
True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
– Alexander Pope
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
– Alexander Pope
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.
– Alexander Pope
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
– Alexander Pope
When to the Permanent is sacrificed the Mutable, the prize is thine: the drop returneth whence it came. The Open Path leads to the changeless change - Non-Being, the glorious state of Absoluteness, the Bliss past human thought.
– Alexander Pope
Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
– Alexander Pope
Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
– Alexander Pope
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
– Alexander Pope
Hither the heroes and nymphs resort,
To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;
In various talk th' instuctive hours they past,
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
One speaks the glory of the British Queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen
A third interprets motions, looks and eyes;
At every word a reputation dies.
– Alexander Pope
In words as fashions the same rule will hold,
Alike fantastic if too new or old:
Be not the first by whome the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
– Alexander Pope
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
– Alexander Pope
Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
– Alexander Pope
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
– Alexander Pope
Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
– Alexander Pope
An honest man is the noblest work of God.
– Alexander Pope
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
– Alexander Pope
He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.
– Alexander Pope
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
– Alexander Pope
To err is human, to forgive divine.
– Alexander Pope
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
– Alexander Pope
Woman's at best a contradiction still.
– Alexander Pope
Wit is the lowest form of humor.
– Alexander Pope
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance.
– Alexander Pope
Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
– Alexander Pope
The learned is happy, nature to explore The fool is happy, that he knows no more.
– Alexander Pope
No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.
– Alexander Pope
Never was it given to mortal man - To lie so boldly as we women can.
– Alexander Pope
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!
– Alexander Pope
Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
– Alexander Pope
I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
– Alexander Pope